Van Til, of Lowell, is a brand manager at Kalamazoo distributor Imperial Beverage, one of the organizers of the third annual Kalamazoo Beer Week, a celebration of craft beer with more than 130 events at various locations around downtown Kalamazoo running through Jan. 18.

Van Til is one of six master cicerones in the world. It's the highest certification in the beer industry and requires passing a grueling exam. Van Til joined us for a live chat to talk about craft beer and shared his seven tips for tasting beer.

1. Environment — Make sure that you and the room you're tasting in are comfortable. Make sure there aren't strong odors or aromas in the room.

2. Glassware — Make sure you’re using a clean glass. Oils, soap, sanitizer, and residues not only make beer look bad in the glass, but they also ruin delicate flavors and aromas we find in beer and wreck the head (foam) of the beer.

3. Pouring — Take the glass in one hand (hold it by the stem if it has one) and the bottle in the other. Tilt the glass and pour beer down the side of the glass. As it fills, you can level the glass and begin to pour down the middle of the glass if necessary to achieve a one to two inch head, which is great for most styles. If, like many craft beers made today, it’s bottle conditioned, stop pouring before you see the cloudy yeast sediment pouring with the beer (usually about ½ inch of beer will be left in the bottle). However, if it’s a wheat beer style that is intended to be served with the yeast, agitate the bottle with that last ½ inch of beer in it, and then pour the rest into the glass. This gives those beer styles their characteristic appearance, flavor, and feel in the mouth.

4. Appearance — Look at the beer. Of course being in a room that has plenty of natural light facilitates this. The density and texture of the foam, the color, the effervescence, and the clarity all give information about the quality of the beer and what you might expect when you taste it.

5. Aroma — How the beer smells, and how these aromatics might interact with what you will sense on your palate when you taste the beer foreplay the overall experience of the beer. Swirl the beer in the glass (this might elicit some giggles until you or the people you’re with get used to it). Get your nose close to the beer and take it in. I find that short sniffs are the most potent at first, but experiment with what you notice by trying different techniques. Look for aromas from different ingredients in the beer. Malt aromas can remind you of bread—white, whole wheat or rye? Toasted? Burnt? Sweet and sticky or hearty and chewy? Hops can be fruity, spicy, earthy. Yeast action can contribute very little character on the nose, or it can express wildly fruity and spicy aromatics.

6. Taste — FINALLY. If you had a beer in your hand and haven’t actually put it to your lips until now, I commend you. Taste the beer. Don’t swallow immediately. Don’t swish it violently, but do let it roll gently around your mouth and palate. Many of the aromatics you noticed before will find roots in their interaction with the bitterness, acidity, sweetness, mineral character, and fullness on your palate as you do this. Swallow the beer. Is the finish (aftertaste) short or long? Does it complement or conflict with what you may be eating? Does it make you want to spit, eat another bite of food, smack your lips, drink something else, or take another taste?